I'm just guessing, but I think Twitter isn't going to have any trouble finding talent anymore, if it ever needed more. Once you break down the walls of location, you now have access to orders of magnitude more talent.
Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
521–530 of 1001 posts
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#522I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I…
> I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial". But thats not the case. If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. There's practical reasons for that. Socialization centered at sc…
This is a very important comment. The comment made too many assumptions about the "nuclear family" ideal for many people. Sometimes work relationships are the ONLY relationship for some people.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#523I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I…
I think the great group of work friends is largely an illusion, revealed by what happens when you leave the company. Very rarely do those relationships remain intact beyond basic career building/reference things. Some do, for sure, but the vast majority don't. This is a strong indicator to me that these are just "friends" of convenience, and are really just acquaintances and not the kind of meaningful relationships in our life where someone will have your back through tough times.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
The current psychological consensus is that critical thing (one of three IIRC) to build friendships are repeated regular meetings/gatherings with (group of) people, forced by some external factor (school, gym, military, office, etc). WFH will strip 'friendship creation factor' from work. Definitely not to zero, but it will in effect reduce fun from work because 'working with friends' will be less often (unless you st…
I've been doing WFH for years. Some of my collegues I've never met in person. I still consider many of them "work-friends" and I feel satisfied with my work/social factor. We are still in repeated regular meetings, even if they are tele/video conference. In fact, thinking back to the last 3 in person teams I've worked with, I enjoy my job and team more with all of us WFH than in office. The issue is not that you can'…
> I've been doing WFH for years. Some of my collegues I've never met in person. I still consider many of them "work-friends" and I feel satisfied with my work/social factor. We are still in repeated regular meetings, even if they are tele/video conference.
IMHO, the difference between a "work friend" and a "friendly relationship with a colleague" is "do you frequently disengage from work to socialize together." For instance: taking breaks together to chit-chat. I can't see how someone you're in "repeated regular meetings" with could quality as a work friend, unless those meetings are not work related.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#525I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I…
Completely unrelated, but Comcast and other cable internet CEOs are probably LMAO-big they way to classify their company as “too big to fail” :)
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#526I would be wary of all this freedom. Once you are WFH, the variable of expendability will increase. Those companies who have been doing it for decades know how hard it is, I doubt twitter does.
I’ll predict this announcement is step 1 in realignment of staff sizing. Perhaps Disney can buy the FB building and turn it into something productive.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#527Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.
Looking at the disparity of incomes of tech workers across regions, makes it abundantly clear that wages would be 50% lower if they could hire anywhere in the country, and probably 80% lower if they could hire anywhere in the world.
We've all worked with highly qualified offshore resources (as well as many bad ones). Do they really deserve that 20k salary when we're making high six figures?
I've started hiring abroad. It's a different form of management, sure, but you absolutely beat the return on investment.
My advice is to try to stick with the same timezone, and the same language (or roughly anyway).
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#528I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I…
> I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial". But thats not the case. If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose. There's practical reasons for that. Socialization centered at sc…
Forgive me if I get the citation wrong, but I believe I remember listening to Ezra Klein talking how for much of the 40s/50s/60s, communities were organized by churches and community institutions. I would easily add military service to this as well.
If you were a doctor, you would still know your community fairly well; whether they be a farmer or another blue collar worker. As we've replaced the prominence of community based institutions such as churches with elite institutions (primarily colleges and workplaces), we've isolated lots of people who aren't able to participate in these communities (due to many inequalities). Obviously these previous community institutions had major flaws (racism/sexism), but they still provided a shared experience that makes a diverse and broad social group easier.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#529How do you guys cope with non distracted part of being in a office space and compartmentalize the work thoughts and personal one. Curious to know.
Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever
#530It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…
It is generally an oversight to assume that people have ideal work conditions at home and could be more productive. Going to a reliable and steady office is absolutely salutary for many people. There are trade-offs, yes, but no one-size-fits-all. Physical work location and conditions is one potential issue, and emotional/relational conditions are another. Would we want to overlook these issues while still searching for the best talent for our companies?